Page 16 - QDG Volume 9 No. 2 2021

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1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards
B Squadron
It has been a year of two halves for B Sqn, the Cassino Troop taking up the majority of the Squadron’s focus in the first half of the year. Once the Squadron had been reconstituted into a Light Cav squadron upon the end of the deployment this marked the start of the “rebuild” phase for B Sqn. There was also a change of command in summer ’21, when Maj Matthews said his farewells and Maj O’Shea took over the reins.
It was an unusual time for B Sqn, With C Sqn being deployed and A Sqn getting ready to deploy we found ourselves being pulled from pillar to post to support the wider running of the Regiment whilst also having to train for the Upcoming Ex Rattlesnake... or so we thought! The Squadron deployed on a BCS exercise, Ex Eagle’s Develop, to integrate the newer members of the Squadron into how we do business and focus on core recce skills, this was an excellent way for the Squadron to shake out prior to summer leave. We used the excellent training facilities at Thetford to conduct force on force recce training culminating in an impressive dawn attack on a fortified position. For many of the Sqn this was the first time that they had conducted an exercise since joining the Regiment due to COVID 19 issues throughout 2020, so it proved a good way to get back to basics and empower junior commanders to make decisions under pressure and in the field. We built upon this later in the year with Ex Eagle’s Dare, which tested junior
commanders to a greater degree in a smaller but more chal- lenging area in Thetford. It was excellent to see the progress that had been made
and that core recce skills had been enhanced through the BCS program. Low level exercises like this are key to developing leadership at all ranks, all it takes is the imagination to
autumn and really showed the leader- ship qualities of our JNCOs. Indeed, I’m confident that throughout the autumn months B Sqn had more jumps than
develop a realistic exercise scenario. Time spent in the field is precious and this is something that B Sqn will look to enhance throughout the next year.
Time spent in the field is precious
16 Bde! Using the well-es- tablished Army Adventure Training platform was a real win for the Squadron allowing us to generate fun and challenging activity for the members of B Sqn who were not supporting Ex Gao Tempest. Once this commit- ment had ceased it allowed an opportunity to bring the Squadron back together and sights onto our own deploy-
Once we had returned
from summer leave we were immediately called upon
to run the real life support
aspect of Ex Gao Tempest,
the A Sqn mission rehearsal exercise for their deployment to Mali. This took considerable manpower to support, but throughout this time B Sqn was able to get a significant number of junior members enrolled in Army Parachuting courses. This was a thoroughly excel- lent background activity throughout the
refocus our
ment on Ex Rattlesnake in early 2022... or so we thought! Without drawing this joke on throughout the rest of this article, our involvement in Ex Rattlesnake was disappointingly cancelled due to a lack of RAF aircraft to get us over to Loui- siana. It is said that in life only two things